Contrastive of Perception Verbs in English and Arabic - Thesis Example

?Additional Questions: Please translate the following sentences into English ???? ???? ??????. (Moya saw the horse) ??? ???? ??? ?????? (Moyalooked at the Horse) (active) ????? ???? ????? (Shazia looks angry) (descriptive) . ??? ??? ???????? (Zaid heard the music). (state) ??? ???????? ??? ???????? (Zaid Listeb to the Music) (active) ???????? ??????? ????????? (The music sounds wonderful) (descriptive) ????? ????? ?? ?????? (I smell something dirty in the bathroom) (state) ???? ????? ????? (I smelled danger) (descriptive) ??? ????? ????? (Mina smelled the perfume ) (active) ???? ???? ???? ?? ?????? (Meher felt a prick in his thumb) (state). ???? ???? ?????? (Meher felt sick). (descriptive) ???? ???? ???? ???? Tahir felt his tie (Active) . ???? ??????? ???? (Mazi tasted defeat) (descriptive) ????? ??????? ???? Lemon tastes bitter (state) ???? ?????? ?????? ??? (Jack tasted the warm broth) (Active) Chapter 3: Perception verbs in English 3.1   Introduction This chapter presents a discussion on the perception verbs and their usage in English language. It will develop an understanding of the importance and relevance of the correct forms of perception verbs to the meaning of the sentence and will also highlight the basic issues that non-native learners may face when they try to learn the language. This chapter forms an essential background for the conduction of the contrastive analysis between the Arabic and the English language perception verbs.   3.2 What are Perception Verbs Perception verbs are the verbs that define the actions undertaken by our sensory parts. These are an essential element of any language as these have the capacity to explain and display a diverse variety of human behavoiurs and nuances. In semantics, perception verbs have been a subject of much debate and research owing to the complexity of their usage as well as their capacity to be modified in language use. The field of perception verbs is one of the important semantic fields that received the attention of linguists since 1970s, along with other semantic fields like basic color terms (Berlin and Kay 1969), body parts (Andersen 1978), cooking verbs (Lehrer 1974), and motion verbs (Talmy 1975). However, while other subjects and aspects of language have been explored in order to assess the richness of the language or to explore the richness with which concepts can be expressed, perception verbs are of interest due to their difficulty to translate into other languages. Perception verbs relate to the active usage of language and portrat not only the perceptions, but often the emotions and the conceptions as well. This makes the usage of the perception verbs complex and difficult to translate in different languages.   Also, other elements of the language like the nouns, vocabulary etc., are easy to learn as these are governed by simple rules of grammar. These semantic fields share universal elements, and exist frequently in many languages. It is a well-known fact that in order to recognize the typological shape of any language, we must be aware of “the distinctive character of its structure in relation to other languages based mainly on work in general typology, and on contrastive analysis and other types of cross linguistic studies” (Viberg, 2006, p.3). Perception verbs have also “supplied a rich field of research in linguistics including grammaticalisation, complementation and semantic change” (Ibarretxe-Antunano, 1999, p. 41).    The complexity associated with the perception verbs has its roots in the variety of modes in which perception is understood. Perception is a basic human process through which they are able to access external inputs and make sense of their surroundings. However, academic definition of perception is varied as different scholars tend to define perception differently. The definition of perception is essential to understand as it has a direct impact on the development and usage of the perception verbs. Sekuler and Blake defined it as “a biological process wherein the brain derives descriptions of objects and events in the world, using information gathered by the senses” (as cited in Ibarretxe-Antunano, 1999, p.131). Sekuler and Blake also described the conventional five senses (i.e. vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste) as “channels for information about the world” (p.131). This is a basic definition that explains perception as an inherent biological aspect of a person where the sensory organs are employed to gather external information from the world and convey it to the brain. According to Classen, perception is defined as “different modalities for conveying information about the physical world” (as cited in Ibarretxe-Antunano, 1999, p.131). This definition can be interpreted to mean that perception is the process through which different channels or senses convey information about the external world.   Another definition of perception is given by Viberg (2001) where the purpose of perception is the main focus. The major purpose of perception in humans is “to recognize and identify objects, events and their spatial and temporal arrangements and to provide the environmental input for the construction of a model or cognitive representation of the external world” (Viberg, 2001, p.1294). This definition relates the process of perception from merely being of sensory nature to being a process that leads to the mental development of a cognitive image of the external world. In addition, the concept of perception is not restricted to the five senses alone in certain cultures. In the Eastern cultures, perception also goes beyond the five sense perception to mean perception, understanding or knowledge of the extra-sensory world. Owing to the diverse ways in which perception is understood, it is logical to find that perception verbs will have different meanings and usages in different cultures, and hence the difficulties in translation from one language to the other.   On a more broader scale, perception verbs inherently have some unique characteristics. This is because, perception has two basic states – static and active. A static perception occurs when the subject is in an involuntary state of sensing the sensation, while an active state occurs when the subject is involved voluntarily in the process. These two different states of perception are therefore delineated by different forms of perception verbs.   The concept of perception – whether it’s the act of sensing or the state of sensing – is also important to understand as the usage of verb depends on the implied meaning. For example, in the case of “to see”, the verb defines the act of perceiving a sensation through the eyes, while “see” would define the state of the eyes when they perceive the sensation. In the former case, “to see” implies that perception is a holistic process that includes the usage of a sense (the state of using eyes) and the interpretation of the information as it is conveyed to the mind (or the activity of seeing).     In a later study, perception verbs were explained as having "a central role among mental verbs, and their complex patterns of polysemy show both cross linguistic regularities and language- specific characteristics” (Viberg, 2008, p.123). This definition indicates that perception verbs are used more to describe the activity of perception rather than just the state of perceiving. This in turn implies the importance that perception verbs play in language development and acquisition, as most concepts and ideas are conceived through the expansion of usage of words that describe the mental cogitions. In addition, perception verbs have a vital role in language acquisition since they have a very frequent occurance in any language and have different usages by speakers of all world languages. However, difficulties arise when people from different language backgrounds try to learn a new language, as in the case of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. These difficulties range from pronunciation, vocabulary, vowel sounds, syntax development to grammar (Mitchell and Myles, 2004). Grammar is assumed to be the most complex aspect of an EFL programme where the students may find it difficult to relate to the syntactic as well as the semantic aspects of the new language. This difficulty also extends to the perception verbs that are used at times in completely different meanings and structures from the native languages of the learners. The next section thereofore discusses the perception verbs in further detail and begins with a semantic as well as a syntactic discussion and usage of these verbs. 3.3 Perception Verbs and their Meanings (The Semantic Level) The semantic difficulty in the acquisition of perception verbs lies in two types of meanings: prototypical and non-prototypical. Each type will be discussed in detail followed by examples. Concerning prototypical meanings, perception verbs are classified into three types according to the grammatical role of their subjects: cognitive verbs, active verbs and descriptive verbs (Rogers, 1971).                                                       3.3.1 Cognitive Perception Verbs: This group of verbs is defined differently by different authors. It is defined as “the receiving of an expression by the senses independently of the will of the person concerned” (Poutsma, 1926, p. 341); “verbs which describe the act of passive perception” (Helle, 2005, p.4); and “a state that is not controlled” (Viberg, 1984, p.123). 'Hear' and 'see' are good examples of such verbs as opposed to 'listen to' and 'look at'. The subject noun phrase of such cognitive verbs is called an experiencer. Examples: a. The farmer saw the horse. b. Huda heard the music. c. Jack felt a needle in his pocket. d. Mary smelled something burning in the kitchen.  e. Jack tasted onion in his soup.   This set of verbs is called differently as ‘inner perception’ (Leech, 1971, p. 23); ‘passive perception’ (Palmer, 1966, p. 99); ‘cognition’ (Rogers, 1971, p. 206); ‘stative with experiencer subject’ (Lehrer, 1990, p.223); and ‘experience’ (Viberg, 1984, p. 123).   While there is a difference in the way the verbs are defined, these set of verbs contain certain distinct aspects that mark them as diverse from the Active perception verbs. These differences are essential to understand as it’s the lack of understanding of the same that lead to errors in translation and second language learning of perception verbs. These aspectual differences between the stative/cognitive and active perception verbs are discussed in detail in this chapter later under the sub-heading of Perception Verbs Aspectual Characterization (State and Activity Verbs).   3.3.2 Active Perception Verbs:  In contrast to cognitive perception verbs, active perception verbs entail a special activity by the perceiver. These verbs are described as “an unbounded process that is consciously controlled by a human agent” (Viberg, 1984, p.123). 'Listen to' and 'look at' are examples for such verbs. These active forms are “syntactically non-stative and the subject of such active verbs is called an agent” (Scovel, 1971, p.79).   Examples: a. The farmer looked at the sky. b. Huda listened to the music. c. The woman felt the scarf (i.e. to see how silky it was). d. Liza smelled the perfume (i.e. to see if she could buy it). e. The kid tasted the cake (i.e. to see if he could eat it).   These verbs are called differently as ‘active perception verbs’ (Poutsma, 1926, p. 341; Leech, 1971, p. 23; and Rogers, 1971, p. 206); ‘active experiencer subject’ (Lehrer, 1990, p. 223); and ‘activity verbs’ (Viberg, 1984, p. 123).             These active perception verbs are therefore indicative of a voluntary action on the part of the subject, as opposed to a static impinging of the sensation on the subject. These differences between the state and the active verbs are further elucidated in the later sections to highlight the scope of error for second language learners. 3.3.3 Descriptive Perception Verbs: This type of perception verbs is defined as: “a set of copular verbs which, unlike the vast majority of verbs in English, do not occur with adverbs, but with adjectives” (Scovel, 1971, p. 82). Descriptive verbs are also defined as "verbs whose subjects are the stimuli of the perception” (Ibarretxe-Antunano, 1999, p. 44). Examples:                                               a. Mary looks angry. b. The music sounds gloomy. c. The dress feels smooth. d. The baby smells perfumed. e. The dessert tastes delicious. This group is called differently as ‘flip verbs’ (Rogers, 1971, p. 206); ‘stimulus subject’ (Lehrer, 1990, p. 223); ‘copulative’ (Viberg, 1984, p. 123); and ‘percept’ (Gisborne, 1996, p.1). The decriptive or the copulative verbs are unique in the fact that they determine the perception of the subjects, who are also the source of the sensation for that perception. In common usage, for a native user, the distinction between descriptive verbs and other perception verbs comes naturally, but, in the case of non-native users, the use of perception verbs in the form of a descriptive verb is difficult to understand.   According to the above mentioned description of each group, these different types of perception verbs are named differently by different authors. In this study, the researcher follows the basic paradigm of the verbs of  perception suggested by Viberg (1984) in which he proposed fifteen different physical meanings of English perception verbs, and listed them in the following table:                        SENSE MODALITY     Activity/Active   Experience/ Cognitive      Copulative/ Descriptive     Sight look at   See   Look Hearing listen to   Hear   Sound Smell smell (sniff at)   Smell   Smell Taste taste (savor)   Taste   Taste Touch feel (touch)   Feel    Feel   When we move from the perceived to the more abstract meanings of perception verbs, we find that perception verbs can extend their meanings to certain non-prototypical meanings. Non-prototypical meanings are defined as “all those extended meanings, both physical and metaphorical, that these verbs can convey apart from the central prototypical meaning of physical perception” (Ibarretxe-Antunano, 1999, p.53). An important result of these non-prototypical meanings of perception verbs is the phenomenon of polysemy which is “a term used in the semantic analysis to describe the situation in which a word has two or more related meanings” (Ibarretxe-Antunano, 1999, p.14). This polysemy of the non-prototypical meanings is exemplified in: Sight:                                                                                                           ‘To meet’ as in: I'll see the doctor at six. ‘To understand’ as in: I explained the problem but she could not see it. ‘To consider’ as in: Let’s look at these facts. ‘To seem’ as in: It looks like a great idea.     Hearing: ‘To seem’ as in: It sounds like a good suggestion. ‘To pay attention’ as in:  Listen to what the teacher is saying. ‘To obey’ as in: I told you to listen to your mother. Smell: ‘to suspect’ as in: His behavior smells fishy.    ‘to guess’ as in: My aunt can smell trouble a mile off. Taste:                                               ‘to experience’ as in: It is unbelievable to taste success/ taste freedom.  ‘enjoy, take pleasure’ as in: He likes the sweet taste of revenge. Touch: ‘emotion’ as in: My friend touched my feelings.  ‘to steal’ as in:  I didn’t touch a penny from your money.   3.4 Perception Verbs Structure (The Syntactic Level) Perception verbs are grammatically important because they are characterized by sharing two verb patterns. The first pattern is that English perception verbs can be followed by: object + bare infinitive as in:  I heard my father open the door.  The second pattern is that they can also be followed by:  object + V- ing as in: I heard my father opening the door.   English native speakers use either the first pattern or the second one since the two sentences are grammatically correct. Other perception verbs that follow either of the previous patterns are look at, feel, listen to, observe, notice, perceive, watch, and see. Some other English verbs take one of these two patterns, but not both. The importance of perception verbs and how they affect language learning is stated by Scovel (1971): It is important for language teaching to show how grammar and meaning are interrelated in the structure of language. One way in which this interrelationship can be revealed is through an analysis of the activities and states of perceiving the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch (p.75).                          The syntactic differences between active and cognitive (i.e. stative) verbs of perception are due to their different characteristics as stated by Ota (1963) and cited with some quotations in Scovel (1971, p.79) in the following points: •         Cognitive verbs, such as see and hear, involve a concept of progression; therefore, they rarely occur in the progressive aspect . In contrast, “active verbs don't imply progression and can be found in progressive forms”. On this basis, it is not correct to say: He is seeing the dog, while it is quite correct to say: He is looking at the dog. •         In the active perception verbs, “the subject- agent of the sentence in consciously involved with the verbal action while no such participatory involvement exists with stative verbs”. Hence, stative verbs are not used in the imperative. Therefore, it is quite correct to say: Look at the window! while it is incorrect to say: See the window! •         Cognitive verbs, unlike active ones, are “goal-attainment verbs". In general, stative verbs “imply that the verbal action attains a specific goal whereas active verbs do not usually imply goal- attainment”.     Examples:     I listened to the forest, but I didn't hear a single sound. I looked at the painting carefully, but I didn't see what the artist meant. I sniffed at the kitchen, but I didn't smell anything burning.   3.5 Perception Verbs Aspectual Characterization (State and Activity Verbs) The above discussion on the semantic or the meanings of the verbs and the syntactic or the structural placement of the verbs highlights the fact that both cannot really be understood in isolation. The learning of how to use a perception verb in a sentence cannot be devoid of first understanding the meaning of the verb, while the meaning cannot be derived correctly if the verb is not placed at the appropriate position or in the correct form in the sentence.  It is therefore essential to understand how verbs, especially the perception verbs are modified based on the meaning that is needed to be conveyed, and how their form and placement in the sentence structure leads to an alteration of their meaning. Perception verbs are used in two basic ways – to describe a state of where perception is occuring, or to describe the activity of perception. These two are the basic forms in which perception verbs can occur, and are a source of problem for the non-native speackers (Thomson, 2004) For example, “See”    – State Verb, as it describes a state of perception, that is occurring involuntarily and even without the active participation of the subject. While, “Look” – Activity Verb, as it describes the activity of perceiving, in a voluntary manner involving the participation of the subject. It is seen that activity verbs are agentative verbs, that involve the active participation of the subject in the activity that they represent, and that these verbs also presume that the conduction of the perception activity is in the voluntary control of the subject. This is further detailed with examples in the following sub-sections.   3.5.1 Perception Verbs and Subject Participation The activity verbs are also found to be used in a participative manner by the ‘subject’ of the sentence. These verbs are also called as agentative verbs, as these imply that the subject/agent actively participates in the perception process. An agentative verb is called so because the subject is presumed to have animate and voluntary capacity to conduct the activity that is being suggested.  For example, ‘Look at the rock’ implies that the subject/the implied agent, is involved in with the activity ‘Look’. Hence, here, ‘look’ is a an activity verb. On the other hand, in the sentence, ‘See that rock’, the subject, is not actively involved in the process of perception. This distinguishes ‘see’ as a static verb.     3.5.2 Perception Verbs and Subject Control Another distinction between static and activity verbs is that static verbs cannot be used to denote a voluntary control in response to the command (Halliday and Mattiessen, 2004). For example, it is not possible to give an imperative command: ‘Stop seeing’, as ‘see’ being a state of perception, is out of control of the person involved. However,  you can say: ‘Stop looking’ as ‘look’ is an activity that can be controlled by the subject.     The above examples have highlighted the basic differences in the activity and the state verbs. A more intricate distinction between the stative verbs and actvity verbs lies in the understanding of the two types of verbs in relation to the ‘time’ that they denote, whether a progression or a progress of an activity.   3.5.3 Perception Verbs and Time Static verbs do not imply a time factor and they reflect a continuous progression. For example: “Hear the bells” ‘hear’ is just a state of perceiving the external world while in the following sentence: “He is listening to the bells” ‘listening to’ is an activity that can be curtailed in time. The state verbs therefore simply provide an insight about the ‘fact’ or the aspect of perception that is happening, while the activity verbs denote the progression of the activity and often imply that in future there is a probability of ending of the activity.   In addition to the above three distinctions, activity and state perception verbs are also understood to differentiate between goal attainment by their subjects.   3.5.4 Perception Verbs and Subject Goal Attainment The state and activity verbs can also be differentiated by the goal attainment implication by their usage. For example, in the following sentence:   “He smells the flowers in the Church”  It is implied that the state of perception seeing, is aimed at the attainment of a goal – seeing the church bells. In contrast, the sentence, “She sniffs (smells) in the Church”, Denotes an activity that is without an object.   Thus, according to Huddleston and Pullum (2005), the perception verbs can be segregated as state verbs if these are associated with an object or with the attainment of a goal (for example, smelling the flowers), and the activity verbs are those that do not require a goal accompaniment.   The goal attainment aspect of the state verbs also implies that most state verbs are transitive verbs (as transitive verbs are always accompanied by objects, along with the subject in the sentence). This again, can be used as an aid when learning English by a non-native learner – to identify the state verbs by the presence of their objects in the sentence and then to use the correct form of the perception verb to denote the state (de la Maza, 2008).   3.6 Resultative Perception Verbs In addition to the state and the activity perception verbs, there are also another category of verbs called the resultative perception verbs. The resultative perception verbs are a set of those verbs that are accompanied by adjectives instead of adverbs. The perception verbs that are accompanied by adjectives are employed to describe the aftermath of an action that the verb denotes. For example, in the following sentence,   “The flowers smells wonderful” The verb smells is describing the result of the activity of smelling the flowers. Also, “You look good” In the above sentence, “look”, describes the result of the activity of looking at the person in question.   Similarly, “she sounds worried” The verb “sound” is used to denote the state of using the  sense of hearing. The resultative verbs too are restricted in terms of available forms when they are used for describing the resultant state of using senses other than eyes and hear. The resultative verbs for using nose, tongue or touch are the same as the state and activity verbs – smell, taste, feel.   3.7 Summary This chapter presented a detailed analysis of the perception verbs in English language, their classifications and the meanings that are attributed to their diverse usages. The above discussion on state and activity verbs provided a method of how the perception verbs can be characterized in terms of certain peculiar qualities that they display – their relation to the subject of the sentence, the voluntariness of the subject, the goal attainment or the accompaniment of the objective. The above discussion of the perception verbs in their aspectual context shows how the grammar and the meaning of the verbs can be derived from their usage in the sentences. An understanding of the aspectual context is essential as it helps in learning the non-native language in a relatively more intimate manner. This is because, most of the mistakes that the non-native speakers make can be traced to an inappropriate use of the state and the activity related verbs in the foreign language. Moreover, the use of perception verbs to denote the subject as the source of the perception (as in the case of descriptive perception verbs) is also not inherently understood by non-native users. The chapter therefore provides the basic understanding of the perception verbs, usage, meaning, forms and polysemy and helps in providing guidance to the contrastive analysis between the two languages presented in chapter 5.   References Andersen, E. S. (1978). Lexical universals of body-part terminology. In J. Greenberg (Ed.), Universals of human language (vol. 3, pp. 335-368). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Berlin, B. and Kay, P. (1969). Basic color terms: Their universality and evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press. Halliday, M. A. K. and Mattiessen, C. M. I. M. (2004). An Introduction to Functional Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press Huddleston, R. D. and Pullum, G. K. (2005). A student's introduction to English grammar.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Leech, G. (1971). Meaning and the English verb. London: Longman. Lehrer, A. (1974). Semantic fields and lexical structure. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Lehrer, A. (1990). Polysemy, conventionality, and the structure of the lexicon. Cognitive Linguistics, 1, 207-246. Ibarretxe-Antunano, I. (1999). Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs: A cross-linguistic study. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. Edinburgh UK: University of Edinburgh. Ibarretxe-Antunano, I. (2005). Limitations for cross-linguistic metonymies and metaphors. In J. L. Campo, J. L. Otal, I. N. Ferrando, & B. Fortuno (Eds.), Cognitive and discourse approaches to metaphor and metonymy (pp. 187- 197). Castello de la Plana: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume. Mitchell, R. and Myles, F. (2004). Second Language Learning Theories. NY: Oxford University Press Palmer, F. R. (1966). A linguistic Study of the English verb. London: Longman. Poutsma, H. (1926). A grammar of late modern English. Part II: The Parts of Speech. Section II. Groningen: P. Nordhoff. Rogers, A. (1971). Three kinds of physical perception verbs. Paper presented at the Seventh Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Scovel, T. S. (1971). A look-see at some verbs of perception. Language learning, 21, 75-84. Talmy, L. (1975). Semantics and syntax of motion. In J. P. Kimball (Ed.), Syntax and semantics (vol. 4, pp. 181-238). New York: Academic Press. Thomson, G. (2004). Introducing Functional Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press Viberg, A. (1984). The verbs of perception: A typological study. In B. Butterworth, B. Comrie & O. Dahl (Eds.), Explanations for language universals (pp. 123-162). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Viberg, A. (2001). The verbs of perception. In M. Haspelmath, E. Konig, W. Oesterreicher & W. Raible (Eds.), Language typology and language universals: An international handbook (pp. 1294-1309). Berlin: De Gruyter. Viberg, A. (2006). Towards a lexical profile of the Swedish verb lexicon. In A. Viberg (Ed), The typological profile of Swedish (pp.103-129). Berlin: Thematic issue of Sprachtypol. Univ. Forsch. (STUF). Viberg, A. (2008). Swedish verbs of perception from a typological and contrastive perspective. In M. Angeles, G. Gonzalez, J. Mackenzie & E. M. Alvarez (Eds.), Languages and cultures in contrast and comparison (pp. 123- 172). Amsterdam: Benjamins Publishing Company. Read More